The Metamorphosis is a story about an insect. The insect does what insects do: crawl around capriciously, feed when there’s food and hide in the presence of men. Yet, this insignificant creature managed to transform the lives of a family which could only have been done effectively by Franz Kafka’s brilliant writing.
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| The cover art of the first edition of 'The Metamorphosis'. |
Of course, this insect was once a man named Gregor. But before his metamorphosis, Gregor was nothing more than a machine that provided the Samsa family food and shelter. Kafka carefully crafted the first chapter to convey this. He focuses the first chapter on Gregor and his family’s reaction to his metamorphosis which gives an insight on the state of the Samsa family prior to the metamorphosis.
Gregor’s reaction to his metamorphosis was strikingly unusual. Instead of being shocked at his metamorphosis and worrying about his personal health, he worries about the financial implications that his personal health would have on his family. Instead of worrying about how and why he was transformed, he shows every consideration towards his family and tries “to help his family bear the burden” of his transformation. Isn’t it strange that he believes his family faces the burden and not him? His mind is adamantly focused on how to make it to the train station in time for his job as a travelling salesman, thinking of an excuse to give the director of his firm as to why he failed to board the train on time, or futilely trying to stop the office manager from reporting negatively back to his firm. Furthermore, Gregor let his superiors at work speak disparagingly of him and unjustly show a general lack of trust and disrespect towards him. Paragraph 15, in particular, conveys this and the lines after lines of rhetorical questions show how Gregor was not happy about it. Having Gregor inured to such diatribes shows how deeply concerned he is with keeping a job which he admits he does not like.
But Kafka ensures that we are care for Gregor no matter what. Kafka achieves this partly by digressing into past events in chapter 2. The image of Gregor’s old army days conjures up feelings of youthful optimism in the reader that is at once relatable. His genuine love for his sister as indicative of his unfulfilled desire to send her to a conservatory is heartbreaking. The sedulous work he puts in to support his family after his father’s business collapsed is recommendable. Gregor is an amiable character that the reader is invested in and therefore readers care about the transformation he undergoes.
Gregor’s transformation goes beyond his physical appearance. He also undergoes a psychological transformation, a change in his character. In the first half of the prose, he is depicted as the person who wants to provide for his family. In fact, he even says he prides himself of doing that. But since he could no longer do that due to his metamorphosis, he becomes dependent on his family. Kafka has placed him outside his comfort zone hence there is likely to be some character revelations. Midway through the story, readers see Gregor express anger towards his family for treating him poorly. The story was written in the third-person but it reads like it is coming from Gregor’s own thoughts, so it makes sense that the diction in which the story was written changes according to his character change; for example, instead of living in his room, Gregor is said to be “imprisoned” in his room.
Not only does the language change, but his room symbolically changes with him. As months passes by since his metamorphosis, he becomes more of an insect and less of a human being. He first hates his favorite beverage, milk, and prefers rotten food. His eyesight slowly becomes distorted and man-made objects become harder and harder to recognize. He begins to find pleasure crawling on the ceiling and walls. His room changes almost in parallel with him. His room becomes less human. His furniture starts to disappear. He recognized that he needs that furniture to retain any resemblance of his humanity which is why he protected his picture frame, something that he artfully crafted when he was human and something that could only be artfully crafted as a human. Finally, the last stage of his room’s transformation is it being used as a storage room. No man could inhabit it anymore. It became a place ideal for insects just like Gregor.
Ironically, the more of an insect he became, the more human he was in his family’s eyes (except perhaps his sister’s). Prior to his metamorphosis, Gregor was nothing more than a source of income for the family. Nether of his parents worked - his dad would linger over breakfast for hours. It is not his family’s fault though; Gregor subconsciously chose to not live a human life. Instead of spending his spare time seeking a girl to love, he creates one by cutting a magazine picture and meticulously building a frame for it. It is not that he has no ambition; it is that he knows he is stuck. He wants to quit his job but he can’t because he knows he will be paying off his family’s debt for a very long time. He defines his existence as someone who supports his family. He does not acknowledge other aspects of his life nor does his family as they have “gotten used to it”, the idea that he will be providing for his family. To his family, Gregor will and always be a traveling salesman, nothing more was expected. However, when his metamorphosis came about, all the characters started to change.
Gregor became more human or, more importantly, more of a family member after his metamorphosis. The rest of the Samsas too became more of a family as they become more dependent on each other. Each of them had to find jobs after losing Gregor’s income. They embrace and comfort each other to help assuage the financial burden. One of the key turning points was when Gregor’s mother pleaded to see her son, “Let me go to Gregor, he’s my unhappy boy! Don’t you understand that I have to go to him!” Before the metamorphosis, she needed Gregor to provide her with food and shelter; after the metamorphosis she feels Gregor needs her. This is the first time we see her express a motherly love for her son and it is further shown when she “begged for Gregor’s life”. In addition to that, despite him being a monstrous insect, his father eventually accepts that he is “a member of the family who shouldn’t be treated as an enemy”. It seems possible that Gregor had not even once fought with his father between the time that he became the breadwinner of the family and the time of his metamorphosis. This first fight between Gregor and his father resembles more of an actual family dynamic than ever before. The family’s reaction to Gregor’s passing is the single most important event in the story. When they gathered into a room immediately after Gregor’s passing as if to give him an eulogy and to mourn for him together as a family, it truly shows Gregor’s transformation from the reticent man who was just a source of income for the family to the son who the family loves very much.
This theme of family that dominates the story makes it appropriate to have the setting be entirely set in the apartment. Just as all the family members undergo changes, so do the apartment: Gregor’s room underwent a dramatic change, the kitchen gets locked more often, different sleeping arrangements had to be done to accommodate the new tenants, etc. There are enough changes to justify the story having only one setting. It was wise of Kafka to do this.
Franz Kafka has crafted a short story with character development matching those found in full-length novels. His concise writing with special attention to diction, his chosen setting that is focused and meaningful in literally every corner of the apartment, his chosen point of view that is third-person but with sense of being first-person, and his formulation of characters that readers care about makes The Metamorphosis a believable story about the transformation of a family engendered by an unbelievable circumstance.
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